TransGaming Announces Cedega Time Limited Demo

Linuxlookup.com is reporting on how Transgaming released a time limited demo of its flagship Linux product, Cedega. The Cedega Time Limited Demo will be available only for a two week period, from November 2nd to November 15th and can be downloaded at www.transgaming.com. Cedega allows hundreds of the top triple ‘A’ PC titles to run on the Linux operating system, seamlessly, transparently, and out-of-the-box with equivalent game-play and performance as the original PC version.

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22 Comments

2004-11-02 4:48 pm

Cedega also supported id Software’s DOOM 3™ the same day as its commercial release.

I thought Doom 3 had a native Linux version.

2004-11-02 4:51 pm

how about they release a product that you pay for once and thereafter have unrestricted access to? i might be tempted to obtain the product then, or alternatively SUSE could release an updated version of Winerack…………

2004-11-02 5:25 pm

i think cedega is a brilliant project, if only they adopted a more like cxoffice approach where they actually game back to the original wine project.

“I thought Doom 3 had a native Linux version.”

i does have a native linux version but it came out a few months after the release of doom 3, cedega was able to run the windows version on the day of release.

2004-11-02 5:45 pm

how about they release a product that you pay for once and thereafter have unrestricted access to?

They somewhat have that, you pay for updates. You can still use the version you have after the subscription ends, you just cannot update it. If the game you care(d) about playing runs properly when you purchase it (based on what you read or this demo), you’re set. You’ve spent your money, you don’t have to spend more.

I’m happy to spend the money, personally. Being able to play City of Heroes without having to deal with Windows has been wonderful. I’ve kept up my subscription even though CoH has been stable since the first update I got from them.

2004-11-02 5:54 pm

Now this is over the top. WINE is open source, not shareware, whether they call it cedega or not. If they keep this up, I might just build and publish binaries myself.

2004-11-02 5:59 pm

FYI – The windows version of Doom 3 running on Linux under cedega runs faster than the Linux version of Doom 3 running on Linux.

This is because the Windows version of Doom 3 is optimised for the processor in assembly to use SSE, SSE2 and all that stuff under the Windows version and the Linux version doesn’t have so much optimisation. Amazing!

As for comparing the Windows version of Doom 3 running on Linux v the Windows version of Doom 3 on running Windows I just don’t know.

2004-11-02 6:23 pm

FYI – The windows version of Doom 3 running on Linux under cedega runs faster than the Linux version of Doom 3 running on Linux.

This is because the Windows version of Doom 3 is optimised for the processor in assembly to use SSE, SSE2 and all that stuff under the Windows version and the Linux version doesn’t have so much optimisation. Amazing!

That’s not true, according to my experience. Linux native version runs faster and smoother.

2004-11-02 6:28 pm

Anyone know what the password is ?

2004-11-02 6:30 pm

cedega is based on a very old fork from wine – a final pre-GPL snapshot of it. if you check the licensing terms for cedega, you don’t want to try distribution packages of builds from the (severely crippled) public cvs – debian & gentoo both tried, briefly

2004-11-02 6:38 pm

So how does WINE compare with this then for games and other apps? Can you actually play games on WINE? Does it support Direct X etc?

Any good links anyone…?

2004-11-02 6:58 pm

I haven’t tried this at all but isn’t it still possible to install Cedega free of charge via CVS? No idea what problems might be but you can read a good guide here:

So how does WINE compare with this then for games and other apps? Can you actually play games on WINE? Does it support Direct X etc?

Wine can play simple things, for example I think I got The Incredible Machine working at one point. An older WineX free build ran Diablo2 fine, but Cedega runs it great today as well. [shrug]

2004-11-02 9:25 pm

I might build myself a little Shuttle box for gaming near the end of this year. Assuming I buy well-supported hardware (NVidia GPU, etc.), can Cedega and Crossover Office co-exist peacefully without giving me any headaches? On a MEPIS system?

2004-11-02 9:55 pm

I think you are the first person to try that particallary configuration. MEPIS isn’t very popular, and people who play games, usually don’t use Crossover Office (it is for corporate use).

So my advice is – try it.

My guess is it will work just fine. Cedega and Crossover office uses differently configurations files, and doesn’t use your windows drive. So it should just work.

2004-11-02 10:04 pm

does this work on freeBSD?

2004-11-02 10:44 pm

It works fine – I have Mepis with CX Office 3.0 and Cedega installed and it works fine

I’m not much of a gamer, but the couple of windows games that I do have and want to run work fine under Cedega

2004-11-02 10:57 pm

errr… excuse me, but when I read released a time limited demo of its flagship Linux product, I understand that I can download the demo before purchasing it (or paying a subscription for that matter), am I missing something or this just can´t be made here.

btw, this webs always seem to be built to make the user tired of it enogh to just give up and pay for the easy access nad move on w/his life.

TIA

2004-11-02 11:30 pm

Password: It’s asking for your *root* password so that it can install system wide. (Yeah, that confused me too!)

Limited demo open source?: Yes and no.

* Yes, _most_of_ the source is available. Look for the ‘rewined’ Wine fork.

* No, they don’t need to release any source. Cedega uses an X11 licenced fork of Wine before Wine changed to the current GPL/LGPL.

Does this work on freeBSD?: No idea. Give it a try and let us know!

Cedega and Crossover Office together?: Should work. The two run as applications and do not share directories so I don’t see any reason for a conflict. In the worst case, you might have to run one at a time though I’d be surprised if that was even necessary!

2004-11-03 5:31 am

I posted this on Linuxgames.com. You can read other comments there.

—-

…follow up…

Sadly, I have to say that I’m not impressed with the demo version. It’s a real pain to use, gives no feedback at times if it is doing something. It’s also not obvious how to manually run the applications; it’s not automatic enough to avoid known problems, and not discoverable enough to find an easy fix.

One positive comment: Once I was able to get a game working — Civilization III — it was much quicker than earlier versions of WineX when I was a subscriber.

That said, I’d rather have the old interface and the new backend; it wasn’t as slick, though I didn’t feel as helpless attempting to dig through it.

Right now, I’ve been entirely frozen out;

“Access to the downloaded file is forbidden.”

OK. What does this mean?

Here’s what happened leading up to the above problem;

1. Installed the demo version. Note: It reports “This product was installed in: /”. Installing in root would be bad…so I checked…nope. Not in /.

2. Ran cedega_timedemo to bring up the menu.

3. Installed a couple different programs.

4. Install went fine.

5. Running the programs returned the “Error=21” message.

6. Did some hunting on the Internet.

7. Cedega is incompatable with exec-shield. Exec shield can be turned off (as root);

echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/legacy_va_layout

echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield

8. Some programs worked…kinda. Civilization III would run, fast, though the sound had to be disabled or the background chirping noise would have driven me crazy. (Noted as a defect in Civ III…though does not happen as much in real Windows.) Updated Civ III to latest relase…no change in chirping.

9. Other programs still reported “Error=21” message. Noted that one last ditch effort that worked for users of the full version was to remove the directory and try again. Nuked the _user_ timedemo directories.

10. After entering in registration information, this message apears;

“Access to the downloaded file is forbidden.”

11. Ran uninstall_cedega_timedemo.

12. Reported some directories had data. Nuked them too.

13. Reinstalled again.

14. As before — after entering in registration information — the message appears again;

“Access to the downloaded file is forbidden.”

2004-11-03 4:16 pm

I saw in the changelog for Wine that the support for DirectX is improving, does this mean that Cedega will get obsolete in the future?

2004-11-03 5:30 pm

I saw in the changelog for Wine that the support for DirectX is improving, does this mean that Cedega will get obsolete in the future?

Not for many commercial games; Cedega handles copy restriction (Safedisc, …) using propriatory knowledge on the copy restriction methods, Wine does not.

If Wine eventually handles DirectX as well as Cedega, you’ll still have to get no-cd patches and other copy restriction removers. A real pain.

This means that if you pop the shrink wrap off of a game, and drop the disk in the drive and install it, Cedega will run the game while Wine will not. Even if DirectX support is the same. Likely, the program will complain about you running a debugger or some other error will appear.

That said, grab the Transgaming demo. I’ve had bad luck with it (see above), though maybe you won’t!